then the person who would go to prison would be a mine operator in Africa or maybe an executive who interfaced directly with the mines.
Honestly even that’s ambitious. The really dangerous mines with lots of forced or child labour are artisanal ones run by small-time gangsters. Roughly speaking, they sell to some sort of local fence, who sells to a regional company they’re connected with, who sells to a national subsidiary that can maintain a rough appearance of propriety when the guys from Apple Silicon come to visit. Every once in a while a journalist traces the chain from end to end, and the Western company says “that’s horrible, we had no idea” with as straight a face as they can muster and cuts out all involved players immediately. It’s a big branching network, though, so there’s lots of people to pick up the slack. Maybe somebody goes to jail, but the rest will slip away and may well start up a new operation that’s the exact same thing.
The sad thing is, I don’t know if it can work any other way. Apple could never openly sign off on the conditions that are just standard in poor countries (actually, wasn’t there a scandal exactly like that?), and nobody’s about to give distant brown people free ergonomic equipment for their sweatshops. If you want poor countries to get on the development path, this is the deal basically, and slavery and other awful things tend to slip in along with that.
The wealthy are terrified of having their heads cut off.
Terrified might be overselling it. That’s like saying ordinary Westerners are terrified of nuclear warfare. Sure, it scares them, but do they really viscerally believe it’s not just a thing on TV?
I’m reminded of that article where the author gets called in for a consultation with hedge fund guys about bunker planning, and they’re asking if, like, they can force their guards to obey them with shock collars. Hopefully you can tell how dumb that is. They don’t know what they don’t know, and have had smoke blown up their ass by wannabes for so long they won’t until it’s too late.
The extraordinary thing in this instance would be if there wasn’t a covert conspiracy.
I think it is extraordinary, but I also think I have a pretty good picture of how it works. It’s more sad than dramatic.